Stealth-Jet Delay Could Screw Marine Corps

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Stealth-Jet Delay Could Screw Marine Corps

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is expected to announce on Thursday that he's cutting a bunch of poor performers from the Pentagon arsenal as part of his plan to save $100 billion from military accounts. But the most profound decision won't be a termination at all. Gates is widely expected to tell the Marine Corps that they'll have to wait an extra two years before they can get their version of the gazillion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter.

The delay for the Marine plane – from 2012 to 2014 – might seem small, on paper. But the second- and third-order effects will mean a less effective and less flexible Marine Corps that's more reliant on the other military services to do things the Marines once proudly handled all on their own. For the Air Force and Navy, whose own F-35 versions are being held back by the jump jet, that probably seems a small price to pay.

The $400 billion JSF program is supposed to replace dozens of combat aircraft with three related models. The Air Force's F-35A will take off and land like a normal jet; the Navy's F-35C will fly off of carriers; and the Marines' F-35B is supposed to be able to get off the ground vertically, like a helicopter or a Harrier jump jet.

The F-35B service delay has been widely anticipated since the Pentagon admitted in the summer of 2009 that the ambitious JSF program was in trouble. The stealth fighter's flight-test delays, incomplete software and parts failures meant trouble for all three versions of the aircraft. The Air Force would need an extra two years ('til 2016) to start getting its more than 1,700 F-35As; plus, development would cost a little more. Arrival of the first of the Navy's 200 carrier-capable F-35C would also be bumped back to 2016.

Oddly, in 2009 the Marines never revised their F-35 schedule – this despite the fact that the three JSF variants share common systems such as engines, sensors and software. If the Air Force's F-35A needed more time, the Marines' F-35B surely did, too.

And for good reason. Three years prior to the JSF's 2009 meltdown, the Marines took stock of their roughly 400 F/A-18 Hornets and AV-8B Harrier fighters and realized that three years of non-stop combat in Iraq and Afghanistan had taken their toll. Dozens of Harriers and Hornets had to be retired immediately and whole squadrons shuttered.

In 2007, Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, then the Marines' top aviation officer, told me 2012 – the F-35B's original service-entry date – could not budge. "The bottom line is, there are only so many airplanes, and the ones we fly are no longer being built, so it's extremely important to us that we maintain a Fiscal [Year] 2012 Initial Operational Capability for the F-35B," he said.

Perhaps realizing he would have to back-pedal from Castellaw's dire statement, this year incoming Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos affected nonchalance regarding F-35 service-entry. "I'm really not wringing my hands over that," he told reporters. "It will be when it will be."

But two more years of waiting means several things for the Marines. For one, the Corps will have to rely more on the Navy and Air Force to provide air support – a big ego blow for a military service that prides itself on self-sufficiency.

There was a time, a decade ago, when the Marines had a chance to avoid the current crisis. The Corps could have joined the Navy in purchasing Super Hornets as a bridge to the next generation of fighters.

The Supers have since evolved into impressive jets in their own right, especially with the addition of one of the world's most advanced airborne radars. The Navy has happily continued buying Super Hornets even as the F-35 progresses. But the Marines wanted only the latest and best technology; no mere upgraded F-18 would do.

That unwavering obsession with high tech painted the Corps into the corner it now finds itself in, waiting around for a much-delayed, over-budget new fighter while its current jets waste away to nothing, deeply eroding the Marines' famed self-reliance.